"Folly, folly, folly! Her love for this dauber is not a thing of to-day or yesterday; she has always loved him; she has never been able to forgive herself for stooping to wed me, the haughty Princess! I knew it from the first! And was I to pocket the insult quietly, act as if I did not notice it, be satisfied with the crumbs thrown to me? I should have been a fool! Nobody would have done so in my place, and I've only done what any one else would, what thousands do who have not even my excuse. Alma would have run away from her silly husband long ago, if I had wanted her, if I had not always dissuaded her. But that would have been just the right grist for their mill; their only regret is that I have not made it easier for them. And I've made it easy enough now. Fool, fool! How I might have made them writhe, how I might make them writhe, if it were not for the accursed money. They put a stone in my path for me to stumble over, and I did them the favor, and now they stand and triumph!" He strode up and down the room like a caged tiger. "But it is not always night. A little more, and I should have wept over that sentimental speech, as if it had been the truth, as if she had not taught the child to hate me, as if it had the slightest trace of resemblance to me, and might not just as well have been his, which it probably would, if he had then been the noble family friend for which he passes now. I have let myself be caught in the snare like a stupid boy. It came too suddenly; I was not calm enough; and Hinrich's reappearance was a shameful blow. Who would have thought it, after the fellow had once been so foolish as to draw all the suspicion upon himself, and I had made things so hot for him here! He shall pay for it, if he ever crosses my path again--the scoundrel; he shall pay for it. He and the daubing parson's son, and the old vagabond, and the damned Jew, and she--she--" He paused before one of the large mirrors which covered the walls of the room between the windows from floor to ceiling. "So I wasn't good enough for her. Other people think differently in this respect. The fact is, I sold myself too cheap. A fellow like me might have made very different pretensions; nay, can still at any moment, though I look now as Don Juan did last night when the devil was chasing him. But it's only the green glass and the dim light." A knock at the door interrupted his gloomy soliloquy. It was a servant, who came to ask whether Herr Brandow was not coming back to the dining-room soon. "At once," said Brandow. He cast another glance at the mirror. "I'm rather deplorable-looking still. No matter! Or so much the better. They will think I am anxious about to-morrow, and fall into the snare all the easier, the blockheads! And to-morrow noon I shall have my thirty or forty thousand in my purse, and--all the rest is nonsense." CHAPTER XXXIV.